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Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary psychology claims to be the authoritative science of "human nature." Its chief architects, including Stephen Pinker and David Buss, have managed to reach well beyond the ivory tower to win large audiences and influence public discourse. But do the answers that evolutionary psychologists provide about language, sex, and social relations add up? Susan McKinnon thinks not.
Far from being an account of evolution and social relations that has historical and cross-cultural validity, evolutionary psychology is a stunning example of a "science" that twists evolutionary genetics into a myth of human origins. As McKinnon shows, that myth is shaped by neo-liberal economic values and relies on ethnocentric understandings of sex, gender, kinship, and social relations. She also explores the implications for public policy of the moral tales that are told by evolutionary psychologists in the guise of "scientific" inquiry.
Drawing widely from the anthropological record, Neo-liberal Genetics offers a sustained and accessible critique of the myths of human nature fabricated by evolutionary psychologists.
Far from being an account of evolution and social relations that has historical and cross-cultural validity, evolutionary psychology is a stunning example of a "science" that twists evolutionary genetics into a myth of human origins. As McKinnon shows, that myth is shaped by neo-liberal economic values and relies on ethnocentric understandings of sex, gender, kinship, and social relations. She also explores the implications for public policy of the moral tales that are told by evolutionary psychologists in the guise of "scientific" inquiry.
Drawing widely from the anthropological record, Neo-liberal Genetics offers a sustained and accessible critique of the myths of human nature fabricated by evolutionary psychologists.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
dnf
September 13, 2022DNF. 130 sayfalık kitabın 77 sayfasını okudum, devam etmeyeceğim.
Yazarın temel iddiası - açıkça söylediği üzere- evrim psikolojisinin niteliksiz bir bilim olduğu. Yazar bir antropolog olarak, derin evrimsel ve genetik kökenlere sahip psikolojik mekanizmaların davranışlarımıza rehberlik ettiği düşüncesinin indirgemeci mitler ve meseller şeklinde sunulduğunu söyleyerek evrimsel psikologların psikoloji ve kültür hakkında yanıldığını kanıtlamaya çalışıyor.
Kitabın anlatım dili genel okuyucu için biraz akademik kalıyor. Okuması zor değil ama yorucu. Ayrıca yazar çok fazla tekrara düşüyor. Ortaya koyulan karşı argümanlar güçlü araştırmalarla desteklenmiyor. Twitter'da bile daha nitelikli tartışma dönüyor bu konuda. Yazar karşı tarafa yönlendirdiği suçlamadan kendisi muzdarip; yaptığı değerlendirmelerin kanıt yerine geçeceği sanrısına kapılmış.
Basım tarihi itibariyle literatürün gerisinde kalmış bir kitap. Ele alınan konuda temel argümanları öğrenmek için bakılabilir fakat illa okunması gereken bir eser değil.
Yazarın temel iddiası - açıkça söylediği üzere- evrim psikolojisinin niteliksiz bir bilim olduğu. Yazar bir antropolog olarak, derin evrimsel ve genetik kökenlere sahip psikolojik mekanizmaların davranışlarımıza rehberlik ettiği düşüncesinin indirgemeci mitler ve meseller şeklinde sunulduğunu söyleyerek evrimsel psikologların psikoloji ve kültür hakkında yanıldığını kanıtlamaya çalışıyor.
Kitabın anlatım dili genel okuyucu için biraz akademik kalıyor. Okuması zor değil ama yorucu. Ayrıca yazar çok fazla tekrara düşüyor. Ortaya koyulan karşı argümanlar güçlü araştırmalarla desteklenmiyor. Twitter'da bile daha nitelikli tartışma dönüyor bu konuda. Yazar karşı tarafa yönlendirdiği suçlamadan kendisi muzdarip; yaptığı değerlendirmelerin kanıt yerine geçeceği sanrısına kapılmış.
Basım tarihi itibariyle literatürün gerisinde kalmış bir kitap. Ele alınan konuda temel argümanları öğrenmek için bakılabilir fakat illa okunması gereken bir eser değil.
July 12, 2012
Blew my mind, and enhanced my shit-talking capacities against my "psychology of marriage and families" teacher.
June 13, 2018
This is one of those books that draws you in because of its title., and curiosity about what the author wants to say, and how plausible it is.
Susan McKinnon calls this book a "pamphlet" – indicating (to me anyway) that she's writing in the spirit of the early pamphleteers to critique a particular perspective, in this case that of evolutionary psychology, a topic I read about first in a book by the Jungian Anthony Stevens and Steve Price. This was many years ago and it would be fair to say that although it read well, it was a particular kind of discourse based on particular presumptions.
McKinnon's field is cultural anthropology, and she uses evidence from various research sources to question these presumptions. The title of the book identifies her core assertion that evolutionary psychology relies more on a depiction of human beings as operating in the same way regardless of culture, particularly with respect to gender relations which she links to US/European beliefs about marriage, jealousy and so on. What is outside her focus is that this particular view presented by evolutionary psychology appears routinely and without questioning, in public and social media.
Whilst the general field of evolutionary psychology is her target, she engages with the expressed ideas of people like Steven Pinker and David Buss and related interpretations of natural selection, selfish genes and so on. To be honest, I think Pinker is a soft target. I haven't read him for quite a while, but this is because I don't think he has credibility. I know he's a best-seller, but people have also bought Dan Brown.
McKinnon queries, legitimately in my view, particular presumptions about human behaviour in the deep past attributed to human beings (however defined) or, more recently, those identified as principles. In this respect, she sits easily alongside Matthew Engelke's book on anthropology, and he is acknowledged for his acknowledgement in this book.
The neo-liberal bit comes in when she demonstrates, quite forensically, that the presumptions about human beings from the field under critique arise out of a particular view of family and relationships that can be located in the 19th century i.e. Victorian. An additional presumption is the ascribing of monetary value/self interest to all relevant transactions, which sounds very much like homo economicus. McKinnon points out in a few examples that this presumption appears to transcend the data from cultural researchers so that the data is interpreted through this lens, rather than examined for what it is.
A side issue here, which for me is relevant to all kinds of research, is McKinnon's observations about samples and sample sizes, bluntly querying the utility and relevance of surveying university undergraduates 17-21 years of age, and extrapolating from that generalised human proclivities and behaviours. To be honest this is a softer touch than Steven Pinker, because it's so obvious and others like Jerome Kagan have critiqued it. There are models of all kinds based on employees in businesses and other organisations that are accepted for any consequent cultural claims.
I must admit I found the author's method extremely enjoyable. At various spots there's a lengthy paragraph pointing out what Buss, Pinker et all didn't think about: the questions they didn't address. This is additionally enjoyable because this book is not a polemic, notwithstanding her "pamphlet" comment, but an unrelenting questioning of particular claims made by a group of people whoi don't seem to have done their homework. Actually McKinnon continually asserts, with questioning and data, that the ideas presented by these people are not scientific and there is an implicit presumption that a particular world-view based on Victorian-era presumptions holds, or should hold for all cultures.
I wonder what she would say about Seligman's positive psychology, which has similar roots and biases?
This is one of those books that's slightly larger than hand-size (mine, anyway) and fortuitously it arrived at the post-office the day of a train journey. I finished it in the evening the same day. It's clearly written and logically presented and argued. Actually, it's an excellent demonstration of how to examine and critique written claims and ideas, and I suspect that if you were a student of hers, your work would also be vigorously assessed and the allocated mark would actually mean something. I don't know that, of course, but it seems plausible
Susan McKinnon calls this book a "pamphlet" – indicating (to me anyway) that she's writing in the spirit of the early pamphleteers to critique a particular perspective, in this case that of evolutionary psychology, a topic I read about first in a book by the Jungian Anthony Stevens and Steve Price. This was many years ago and it would be fair to say that although it read well, it was a particular kind of discourse based on particular presumptions.
McKinnon's field is cultural anthropology, and she uses evidence from various research sources to question these presumptions. The title of the book identifies her core assertion that evolutionary psychology relies more on a depiction of human beings as operating in the same way regardless of culture, particularly with respect to gender relations which she links to US/European beliefs about marriage, jealousy and so on. What is outside her focus is that this particular view presented by evolutionary psychology appears routinely and without questioning, in public and social media.
Whilst the general field of evolutionary psychology is her target, she engages with the expressed ideas of people like Steven Pinker and David Buss and related interpretations of natural selection, selfish genes and so on. To be honest, I think Pinker is a soft target. I haven't read him for quite a while, but this is because I don't think he has credibility. I know he's a best-seller, but people have also bought Dan Brown.
McKinnon queries, legitimately in my view, particular presumptions about human behaviour in the deep past attributed to human beings (however defined) or, more recently, those identified as principles. In this respect, she sits easily alongside Matthew Engelke's book on anthropology, and he is acknowledged for his acknowledgement in this book.
The neo-liberal bit comes in when she demonstrates, quite forensically, that the presumptions about human beings from the field under critique arise out of a particular view of family and relationships that can be located in the 19th century i.e. Victorian. An additional presumption is the ascribing of monetary value/self interest to all relevant transactions, which sounds very much like homo economicus. McKinnon points out in a few examples that this presumption appears to transcend the data from cultural researchers so that the data is interpreted through this lens, rather than examined for what it is.
A side issue here, which for me is relevant to all kinds of research, is McKinnon's observations about samples and sample sizes, bluntly querying the utility and relevance of surveying university undergraduates 17-21 years of age, and extrapolating from that generalised human proclivities and behaviours. To be honest this is a softer touch than Steven Pinker, because it's so obvious and others like Jerome Kagan have critiqued it. There are models of all kinds based on employees in businesses and other organisations that are accepted for any consequent cultural claims.
I must admit I found the author's method extremely enjoyable. At various spots there's a lengthy paragraph pointing out what Buss, Pinker et all didn't think about: the questions they didn't address. This is additionally enjoyable because this book is not a polemic, notwithstanding her "pamphlet" comment, but an unrelenting questioning of particular claims made by a group of people whoi don't seem to have done their homework. Actually McKinnon continually asserts, with questioning and data, that the ideas presented by these people are not scientific and there is an implicit presumption that a particular world-view based on Victorian-era presumptions holds, or should hold for all cultures.
I wonder what she would say about Seligman's positive psychology, which has similar roots and biases?
This is one of those books that's slightly larger than hand-size (mine, anyway) and fortuitously it arrived at the post-office the day of a train journey. I finished it in the evening the same day. It's clearly written and logically presented and argued. Actually, it's an excellent demonstration of how to examine and critique written claims and ideas, and I suspect that if you were a student of hers, your work would also be vigorously assessed and the allocated mark would actually mean something. I don't know that, of course, but it seems plausible
May 31, 2012
Neo-Liberal Genetics offers a brief overview of the fatal flaws in the "Santa Barbara school" paradigm of evolutionary psychology. Due to its pamphlet-sized length, it feels a bit superficial in places, but its probably about the best that can be done with 100 or so rather tiny pages. At times, it feels like some kind of knock-off or miniature companion piece to McKinnon's co-edited volume Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture. (Indeed, it cites the book quite a few times.) If you want something more in-depth, you might as well skip straight to that book.
The book is a bit remarkable in its cultural analysis and emphasis on the ethnographic record and how evolutionary psychologists distort it. It's treatment of this topic is more thorough than many other evo psych critiques. However, the parts on biology felt a little thin. McKinnon essentially says "Genes don't work that way!" She's right, but it would have been nice if she spent some space covering things like gene-environment interaction or evolutionary developmental biology. As it is, she knocks down a flawed conception of biology but leaves the reader with no replacement, or a better way to think about biology. Space limitations, again, are probably to blame here.
If you want a brief, quick and dirty intro to the holes in evo psych, you probably can't do much better than this, though.
The book is a bit remarkable in its cultural analysis and emphasis on the ethnographic record and how evolutionary psychologists distort it. It's treatment of this topic is more thorough than many other evo psych critiques. However, the parts on biology felt a little thin. McKinnon essentially says "Genes don't work that way!" She's right, but it would have been nice if she spent some space covering things like gene-environment interaction or evolutionary developmental biology. As it is, she knocks down a flawed conception of biology but leaves the reader with no replacement, or a better way to think about biology. Space limitations, again, are probably to blame here.
If you want a brief, quick and dirty intro to the holes in evo psych, you probably can't do much better than this, though.
December 24, 2025
Got in a holiday book exchange at work. Most of the gifted books were benign self help, book club classics, the odd thriller, but A.P. brought in an anthropological critique of Steven Pinker- and I ended up with it, thank Boas.
September 5, 2023
This tightly-argued short work was an immensely pleasurable read. A really brilliant polemic. It utterly buries evolutionary psychology, then exhumes the dead body, slaps it in the face a few more times and then drives a stake through the cadaver's heart for good measure. I felt like pumping my fist in the air every few pages. I read about this short book in Science for the People magazine a few years ago and am very glad I finally sought it out.
“Despite the flimsiness of their argumentation, evolutionary psychology is compelling because it gathers into one grand narrative a number of beliefs that are central to Euro-American culture—about the innateness of gender differences and of the sexual double standard; about the naturalness of neo-liberal economic values of self-interest, competition, rational choice, and the power of the market to create social relations; about the survival of the fittest and the determinant force of genes; about evolutionary origins and man the hunter; and about life's complexity having a single key. By combining such popular cultural beliefs into a gripping narrative and cloaking it in the guise of science, evolutionary psychologists give what are otherwise culturally specific 'truths' the aura of a single, fundamental and universal truth.”
*****
“It is precisely because the fossil record is and will forever be entirely mute on psychology that the evolutionary psychologists can (and must, if they are to have a story to tell) fill the void with the details of their own making. These inevitably end up being contemporary (if not Victorian) stereotypes of gendered psychology projected back into deep evolutionary history under the banner of "reverse engineering … Yet we are asked not only to take the cartoon representations of our ancestors as serious representations of our evolutionary origins but also to believe that nothing has changed in the intervening millennia. Despite the creation and demise of cultural worlds of tremendous complexity and variety, despite everything else that is learned and changeable in the diverse human cultural landscape, we are asked to believe that human desires, motivations, and intentions got fixed once and for all and remain genetically programmed.”
March 12, 2008
One could fault this book for being all criticism and no constructive theory. However, as a short pamphlet, I think that it carries out its short critical task very well. And evolutionary psychology is something that at the moment needs a fair amount of criticism and debunking; its use of culturally resonant stories (male rational economic actors, scientific evolutionary origins, etc.) gives it popular appeal, despite the discipline's irresponsible unwillingness to deal adequately with the large wealth of data that contradicts evolutionary psychology's conclusions about the ways in which genes determine our cultural and social world.
July 5, 2021
Uma leitura maravilhosa e necessária. Fiquei bastante impressionada com os argumentos falaciosos da Psicologia Evolucionista questionados pela antropóloga. Estamos em pleno século XXI e ainda nos deparamos com a defesa de pressupostos genéticos essencialistas que visam determinar um papel sexual moralizante e colonialista, baseado em uma universalidade euro-estadunidense, de homens e mulheres na sociedade. Por fim, sugiro o livro a todos!
August 30, 2017
Very good overview about the criticisms around evolutionary psychology. It feels super relevant today as prominent scientists are passing around bad science on gender differences (ultimately misleading the public about gender roles and preferences in the name of "science").
December 30, 2010
Some of the arguments in early chapters are work but the traversal of cultures that do not neatly conform to the standard evolutionary psychology model is thorough and enlightening.
May 10, 2016
Solid (if a bit superficial) critique of the evo-psych movement from a Leftist perspective. Some fascinating claims about the sexualities of exotic peoples.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews